BREAKDOWN: Especially in the top half of the bracket, there is an air of familiarity, as more than one-quarter of the 14 playoff teams come from District 7-2A.

Northlake Christian, which finished off its first undefeated regular season in school history, and Hannan will host first-round games against Redemptorist and Westminster Christian, respectively. Meanwhile, St. Thomas Aquinas will travel down I-55 from Hammond to LaPlace to face Riverside, and Pope John Paul II heads three hours northwest to play Holy Savior Menard.

Along with Riverside from District 8-2A is Newman, which finished the regular season No. 1 in the Class 2A state poll but is the seventh seed in the Division III playoffs, and will host Opelousas Catholic. The winner will travel to Shreveport to face Calvary Baptist, which earned a bye in the first round as the second seed.

Undefeated Episcopal of Baton Rouge is the top seed and also receives a bye this weekend.

FAVORITE: Calvary Baptist. Despite the dominance of Episcopal, the second seed is the best team in the bracket. Their four losses came against two two seeds (Class 5A and Division I), a five seed (Division II) and a six seed (Class 5A). Since then, they won all five District 1-2A games by a combined score of 253-30.

SLEEPER: Newman. It takes a professor of calculus to figure out how the seeds are calculated, but

sometimes it’s obvious the formula needs to be tweaked. The consensus No. 1 team in Class 2A not only is a seven seed, but assuming the Greenies win Friday night, their reward is a trip to Shreveport. Somehow, that seems unfair.

If somehow Newman can figure out how to defeat Calvary Baptist, then they immediately become a favorite to win the Division III title. That seems highly unlikely, however, for a team that has only played away from home twice all season and no farther than LaPlace, where they lost to Riverside.

Pellerin, a 6-4 junior, has offers from Louisiana Tech and Louisiana-Lafayette and interest from LSU, Vanderbilt and Arizona State, according to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune recruiting expert Andrew Lopez. The Panthers scored more than 50 points in four of their final regular-season games.

Patterson, a sophomore, has been drumming up interest from several colleges despite an early commitment to Arizona. The dual-threat quarterback has not run as much this season as he did last year at Hidalgo (Texas) as a freshman, but has passed for 2,000 yards and 26 touchdowns.

IN THE 'DOME: Episcopal vs. Calvary Baptist. It’s boring to predict the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds to make it to the state title game, but there’s no way around predicting that. If the top half of the bracket were a little tougher and there were a team or two strong enough to knock off the Knights, then maybe, although expect Aquinas to give them a fight in the quarterfinals next week.

The bottom half of the bracket is loaded, but Calvary has a bit too much. If any team is going to give the Cavaliers a challenge, it would be Catholic-New Iberia, which could knock off undefeated Northlake in the quarterfinals.

CHAMPION: Calvary Baptist. Trying not to sound like a broken record, if Calvary makes it through the challenging bottom half of the bracket, then it should be able to finish off their first state title. Other than Catholic, there hasn’t been a more dominating team the last half of the season, and finishing on a roll sure helps when trying to win a championship.

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Andrew Lopez contributed to this report. Jim Derry can be reached at jderry@nola.com or 985.373.6482. He will be covering Airline at Covington in a Class 5A bi-district playoff game on Friday (Nov. 15). Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/JimDerryJr.